What is Life Coaching?

Life coaching is an emerging talk therapy designed to help people actually achieve what they want from life. Unlike traditional counseling, life coaching is not a licensed or regulated profession, but there are governing bodies such as the ICF which accredits various coaching schools and allows there to be a certain level of standardized certification among the profession.

While unfortunately almost anyone can say they’re a “life coach,” very few have put in the time, effort, and resources to become properly trained and certified from an accredited school.

Professionally trained coaches have the tools and knowledge to ask the right questions—like a detective—to draw out from yourself what is the true solution to your problems may be. In a way a life coach is like your subconscious reflecting back (your own) answers to you.

Done properly, everything you take away from one of our sessions will be perfectly aligned with your true self, and you’ll leave with a clear path forward, or at the very least, the next best step for you to take. And the best thing is, it’s all coming from you. Think of a life coach as a mirror, reflecting back to you what’s really inside.

How life coaching is different from therapy

While there is some degree of overlap between the two, the main difference between life coaching and counseling is that licensed therapists tend to focus more on your life experiences, traumas, and pain. It’s designed to help the client understand, integrate, and heal these wounds left on our psyche.

Life coaching works best if it comes after that process, when the client, now armed with a degree of self-awareness, is ready to move from simply surviving to thriving in their life. After healing comes growth.

In general, therapy is focused on the past, whereas life coaching is about moving forward into the future. If therapy is preparing the soil and planting the seed, then coaching is watering it and cultivating its growth. You can see how simply leaving things at therapy tends to result in few tangible results without practical action. It’s the difference between head and heart knowledge, and bridging the gap to bring that understanding into real world, physical changes.

Who is a good candidate for life coaching?

You’re a good candidate for coaching if you have done the preliminary groundwork of deeper introspection and healing from your past traumas and ACEs (adverse childhood experiences, which pretty much everyone has).

Coaching would be a great fit for you if you’ve been “doing all the things” to heal, such as journaling, shadow work, meditation, counseling, etc., but you’re finding those things only seem to take you so far on your path towards wholeness and joy. Perhaps you feel you’ve been hitting a glass ceiling in terms of fully healing, and it’s starting to be noticeable—even holding you back from creating a life that you love.

Maybe you thought you had it all figured out, and had grown past certain things, only to be unexpectedly triggered again and you wonder if you’ll ever feel consistently regulated. It can be very frustrating to do so much inner work and still not feel better on a day-to-day basis.

Keep in mind, coaching is only effective in so far as how willing the client is to put the effort in; I’ve turned clients away because they decided to not do their “homework” (our agreed upon action steps). A big part of coaching is accountability.

Coaching would not be a good fit if you’re just looking for someone to hold your hand and listen to you complain about your life, while you’re simultaneously refusing to do anything about it.

Here at Healing Hearts we’re looking for clients who are self-aware, naturally curious, transparent, intellectually honest, and above all, are committed to their own betterment. Additionally, taking a sense of ownership and responsibility for your life is essential to beginning a truly transformative life coaching journey.

What to expect from your coaching session

Usually we begin with some basic information, like you talking through your current life situation, your past experiences, as well as what you’re unsatisfied with and what you wish were different about your life. The more information I can get, the more complete the picture I’ll have of your situation and the more effectively I can coach to the problems you’re facing.

You’ll then be asked a series of questions so that I can dig deeper into your focus area for our time; each session usually has a stated end goal for what you, the client, would like to achieve during our hour.

Unlike many coaches, I seek to ferret out the root cause of what ails you, in order to provide more permanent results. Yes we can absolutely come up with a list of “Ten Ways to ______” if that’s your aim, but what I’m more interested in is finding out the why and what is actually causing the issue. I’ll never understand coaching that relies on surface level life hacks, because the client will always have the same issues pop up, just in different ways.

It’s like having a toilet that stopped flushing. Instead of calling a plumber and getting it properly fixed, many coaches’ approach would be the equivalent of; “Just don’t flush the toilet.” “Use less toilet paper.” “Use your neighbor’s toilet.” “Don’t relieve yourself as often.” Problem avoided solved! Except, sooner or later, you’ll inevitably have sh*t overflowing everywhere.

Like most things, it’s easier to slap a band-aid on it (cover up the symptoms), but it’s always better to find the real cause, address that, and then the condition will naturally better itself over time. Which one do you prefer?

How long until I see results?

You most likely will leave the very first session feeling immensely better about your concerns; you’ll discover a newfound sense of hope and optimism that you can make positive differences in your (once hopeless) situation. We usually have some type of action step or next thing to do or try, as well as a plan of action towards reaching your long-term goals.

Sometimes a client just needs to talk and receive validation on what they’re feeling or experiencing, sometimes they need specific advice or words of wisdom that are relevant to what they’re going through.

Above all, our clients always leave with something positive right away, and over time, step by step, they start making the necessary adjustments and reap the benefits of their coaching work.

Results can be seen as early as a session or two, but it’s not uncommon for clients to seek continuous support spanning months or even years.

Some clients receive coaching for a few months, reach improvement in their desired areas, and discontinue coaching for a time but then start back up again months later as new life challenges crop up. Just like nature, our lives reflect different seasons. The amount of time it will take to “see results” for your specific needs vary depending on the variables, your own level of self-actualization, and how proactive you are as a client.

Given that, in general most clients achieve what they’re looking for from a commitment of at least several months.

How is Healing Hearts different than other coaches?

We set ourselves apart in two ways. One is the integration of somatic release work in conjunction with the practicality of coaching.

What many people don’t understand is, the body actually holds onto trauma. So even if your mind is clear and you’ve talked out your early childhood C-PTSD, you most likely still feel the effects of that trauma.

Anxiety, depression, a sense of impending doom, inability to relax or have fun, difficulty trusting others, self-sabotage, no motivation…The list goes on, but the point is that most talk therapy completely skips over the most important aspect of healing, and that is being able to be fully in your body in the present—and feel good doing so.

While we can offer tips and ideas to do this on your own, or how to find other somatic professionals to work alongside you, our main offering is something called BodyTalk, which is a whole body health system. Read more about BodyTalk, what it does and what it is, here.

The second part of our unique approach to coaching is the ability to see things from a higher consciousness perspective.

Everything Healing Hearts LA does is through the lens of increasing the world’s consciousness, and you are a part of the world. I was gifted with a high level of intuitional understanding, and am able to see through situations for what they really are, as well as understand what deeper dynamics are at play.

All of this is done with the goal of supporting you in your quest for a more happy, balanced life.

Additionally, I meet clients where they’re at in a trauma-informed way. What this means is that a client’s past trauma and life experiences are always kept top of mind during our session. We are not who we are in a vacuum, everything is connected to everything else. What works for you won’t work for another, and a part of that is considering past pain.